To be in disbelief that this can happen on a public hospital ward?

[JackiePlace]

I'm talking about this horrific story. Surely someone saw something! My heart goes out to this poor lady's family.

www.thesun.co.uk/news/21646082/grandmother-75-bleeds-to-death/

Truly awful but doesn't surprise me.

My DD (22) was in hospital last year and I slept next to her in a chair for 4 nights. Anyone could walk in, and they did. We saw various men wandering around, some in a state of undress, drunk or mentally ill, looking for A&E.
There's no way I would have left a vulnerable female of any age.

For what reason ?.

Not busy overnight - no visitors, few staff

The murderer is still at large. The man you are referring to was a carer at the same hospital who found guilty of kissing and touching women he worked with.
www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/blackpool-hospital-carer-kissed-women-26154811

Because the murderer was never caught.

Horrific!

It’s horrifying, utterly horrifying what some men are capable of. They need putting down.

We have swipe cards to get into wards but it’s a push putting to get out so anybody could let anyone else in. Depending on the layout of the ward, you walk past single patient rooms without passing the reception desk. And you could let yourself out of the ward without asking anyone else.

*push button

Was there not a case a while ago of a young woman who was in either in a coma or severely disabled, had the mental age of someone a lot younger. She was raped regularly and fell pregnant. Not sure if it was in the UK but nothing surprises me now unfortunately.

A long time ago, wards were female only and there was a female nurse at all times at the entrance to the ward, day or night. Men entering would be challenged or supervised, even doctors would have a female chapherone.

Currently society is so naive and in denial about how some men treat women, given the chance.

If there is a ward of vulnerable women and men are allowed 24/7 access, rape will occur. This incident made the news because the woman died as a result of her injuries.

Makes you wonder what the actual number of sexual assaults occurring in hospitals is, doesn’t it.

Was that not in America ?

A long time ago, wards were female only and there was a female nurse at all times at the entrance to the ward, day or night. Men entering would be challenged or supervised, even doctors would have a female chapherone.

The trouble is there have been a few threads of this and many posters believe that men should be allowed to spend the night on the maternity wards.

Then there’s the issue of children’s wards and dads needing to stay there.

I think there should be female only wards but that won’t completely stop this from happening and I don’t think they’ll have the staff to maintain single sexed wards in all departments.

There was a recent case of women (I think in Brazil) who were having c-sections under anaesthesia and the male nurse was orally raping them whilst all the other nurses and doctors stood round focusing on delivering the baby.

It makes me sick how vile some men are.

There’s plenty of hospitals with wards that anyone can wander into but if she was attacked overnight it was almost certainly a male member of staff which should limit the number of suspects.

A woman can bleed out from a severe vaginal wound in a few hours especially if they are on blood thinners which as a stroke patient she probably was. An attacker would draw curtains around the bed and if there were no overnight checks I can see how this could have happened.

Failure at the hospital on several levels. Poor lady that must have been horrific.

I ended up in A&E a couple of months ago and was admitted as an emergency. I was on a 4 bed ward where all the curtains were draped so that I was not visible from the nurses station. Visiting time ended but a man visiting the woman in the bed opposite stayed. He was a metre away from me with a view of me in bed. I was in pain and on morphine and drifting in and out of consciousness. Twice I dragged myself out of bed to show the nurses a message I wrote on my iPhone explaining the situation and saying I felt unsafe. Nothing was done. Unbelievable

A female patient was told by the hospital and Trust that she couldn't have been raped as there were no men present at the time. The rapist was a 'trans woman'.

The Times, 19th March 2022:
Hospital staff advised police that a patient could not have been raped because her alleged attacker was transgender, the House of Lords has been told.
Officers investigating the attack, which allegedly occurred a year ago, were told that “the rape could not have happened” because no male was there.

Neither the hospital nor the investigating police force have been named.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, who raised the issue during a debate on single-sex wards in hospitals, said: “They forgot that there was CCTV, nurses and observers.

“Nonetheless, it has taken nearly a year for the hospital to agree that there was a male on the ward and, yes, this rape happened.

“During that year she [the victim] has almost come to the edge of a nervous breakdown because being disbelieved about being raped in hospital has been such an appalling shock.

“The hospital, with all its CCTV, has had to admit that the rape happened and that it was committed by a man.”

I have a relative currently in hospital. A very modern one with single rooms. Walk in from the car park, along the corridors, up in the lift, into the ward and into the room without speaking to a soul. All doors unlocked. You only have to buzz to be let into a ward overnight - after about 9pm.

It is so easy to see how something like this could very easily happen.

The NHS must "urgently investigate" rape and sexual assault in hospitals, the Shadow Health and Social Care secretary said after an investigation uncovered "disturbing" figures. Byline Times unearthed shocking figures claiming 4,100 patients, visitors, and NHS staff who were raped, or sexually assaulted between January 2019 and September 2022.

Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Hospitals ought to be safe places for patients and staff, but these disturbing findings show that is not the case for far too many people. The NHS should urgently investigate why these disgusting crimes are allowed to happen and on such a widespread scale.”

Data collected from 31 police forces across the country revealed the scale of the issue which included at least three incidents against a female child under the age of 13.

Of the reported allegations, 5.21% resulted in a charge or summons.

Byline Times [1] & Byline Times [2]

Awful and terrifying this poor woman and her family. As a nurse I echo what others have said, my ward is swipe access however, people constantly leave the door open, patients nipping out for a fag leave it on the latch, porters bring beds/equipment through and leave it wide open. It drives me mad, every morning I say please keep an eye on the doors and if they are open shut them. We have confused patients who could wander out also.
I work on a 27 bedded ward with 7 patients in each bay and 5 side rooms at the entrance before you get to the nurses station.
We are always short staffed so I can well imagine how a patient may not see staff for a while.

Hospitals are not at all secure, it was only a few months ago we got locks on the door, people can access the hospital from multiple points, I felt particularly vulnerable at night.

Another disturbing aspect of the case in the OP is that, because of the delays in finding the (dead) victim and then backlogs in the post-mortem system, any "biological evidence" was lost or had decayed too much to be of use to the police 🙁

@Battlecat98, I didn't understand how a patient could bleed to death without setting off some sort of alarm? And even if she was unconscious or semi-conscious, surely she'd have registered physiological distress during the attack?

Obviously, no alerts were activated. But I'm puzzled about why.

Grace. She bled to death from her vagina. There aren't many monitors or alarms in that part of a woman's body, she had suffered a stroke, loss of speech and movement can occur. She couldn't have protested. I am sorry to be so graphic.

Thanks, @TrombonesAreNotBones. I just thought the plummeting blood pressure or galloping heart rate should have set off an alert. As you can tell, I'm not a medical professional!

I hope to god she was completely unaware of what was happening to her.

Years ago I was went to A&E and was admitted with pancreatitis and suspected gallstones. I was told I needed an ultrasound but it was a Sunday afternoon and I was the last patient they would see that day so that part of the hospital was pretty much closed.

I was wearing a hospital gown and taken down on my own by a male porter to see a male radiologist in a closed part of the hospital. DH wasn't allowed to go with me as he was sent home as it was outside of visiting hours. Everything was fine but would I agree to that now? No way.